Kinect Star Wars - Xbox 360http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/atom.aspxCommunity Server2011-06-05T23:06:00ZThe Force Is Broken/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2012/04/04/the-force-is-broken.aspx2012-04-04T22:41:00Z2012-04-04T22:41:00Z<p><img style="max-width:610px;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/review/kinectstarwars1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Ignore my abysmal rating for one second. I had a good time playing Kinect Star Wars. More accurately, I laughed all the way through it, and most of the people who jumped in to play cooperatively with me left with smiles on their faces.</p>
<p>Some of the comedy is intentional, mostly delivered through minigame diversions separate from the core campaign. Dancing alongside Han Solo to a familiar pop song rewritten with groan-inducing Star Wars-themed lyrics is a strange idea, even for a company that decided Greedo shot first. Watching Han perform moves like the &ldquo;trash compactor&rdquo; and &ldquo;falcon in flight&rdquo; hurt my inner nerd, but more so made me laugh and shake my head in disbelief. Galactic Dance Off mode is designed to be fun and weird, and it succeeds in being both.</p>
<p>The dance mechanics are similar in design to Harmonix&rsquo;s Dance Central, but lack accurate motion recognition. I received a three-star ranking doing nothing but crotch chops &ndash; some were applauded by the game as &ldquo;Great.&rdquo; This mode offers a handful of unlockable parody songs that have no business being a part of Star Wars. Christina Aguilera&rsquo;s &ldquo;Genie in the Bottle&rdquo; is transformed into &ldquo;Princess in a Battle,&rdquo; and the Village People&rsquo;s &ldquo;YMCA&rdquo; (which I thought would be &ldquo;YODA&rdquo;) is &ldquo;Empire Today.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Another minigame, the Rancor Rampage mode, gives you control of the giant creature that Luke Skywalker killed with a steel door in <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. I reveled in dealing massive amounts of environmental damage with its powerful attacks. This hyperactive rampage is mostly free of challenge, but it&rsquo;s one of the game&rsquo;s few highlights. The act of picking up a lowly human and inserting him into the rancor&rsquo;s mouth is hands-down my favorite use of Kinect yet; you can even pick up a human in each hand and devour both of them at once. Humans not deemed worthy enough for lunch can be hurled hilariously far into the distance.</p>
<p>The remainder of the game takes itself much more seriously, and like most Star Wars video games, is a story-driven experience similar to those offered on the silver screen. In a mode called Jedi Destiny: Dark Force Rising, I assumed the role of one of eight silent Jedi padawans &ndash; all appearing to be far too old to start their Jedi training. After being wowed by the simple action of extending my right hand to use the Force to grab my lightsaber, the gameplay went downhill shortly after the blade was ignited. Kinect struggles to pick up arm movement most of the time. After a few dozen failed attempts to recognize my intended wrist flicks and raised arm strikes, I switched to short robotic swings and found a higher level of success. Since most foes ran blindly into my attack zone, this strategy worked out well. With most of my focus applied to simply making the game work, I derived little fun from it.</p>
<p>Actions like jumping or lunging run into similar detection problems. Given how much I tried to emphasize my intent, most battles were obscured by Kinect&rsquo;s &ldquo;move back&rdquo; into the field of play warning. The game often lost track of me, resulting in five second delays to reestablish participation.</p>
<p><img style="max-width:610px;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/review/kinectstarwars2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Excitement and tension also dissolve if you delay a split second when you&rsquo;re expected to perform an action. At that point, a holographic version of Obi-Wan appears onscreen to show you exactly what to do. In a few instances, he even appears directly in the center of the screen over the action. I never once felt like a Jedi playing this game. Instead, I felt like I was thrown into an elaborate dance line, forced to watch the person standing next to me to figure out what move I should do next.</p>
<p>The worst part of it all is that the cinematics show Jedi doing miraculous things. They spin through the air, bounce off of the heads of foes, and become the unstoppable forces I was hoping to be. As soon as I took control, simple dodges and arm waving replaced those spectacular feats.</p>
<p>Though Kinect Star Wars lacks the spirit of Jedi combat, I still found it to be amusing. A few laughs even came from the story, which spends most of its time recreating moments from the Star Wars films rather than paving its own path. It&rsquo;s a Frankenstein-like mash-up that includes a sarlacc pit battle (complete with skiffs), speeder bikes zooming through a dense forest, and a space battle that concludes with an &ldquo;escape the exploding reactor&rdquo; sequence. Even the Sith warriors, who initially look like new characters, are just re-skinned versions of Darth Maul. They wield double-bladed sabers, and perish before we learn anything interesting about them.</p>
<p>Space battles round out the Star Wars experience. These gameplay sequences move slower than molasses and are more about picking ships out of a busy background than testing your gunning skills. If you see a ship, you usually have a good five to seven seconds to down it.</p>
<p>Kinect Star Wars is a bad game. If you go into it knowing that you are getting full-on camp like <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special</i> rather than a legitimate Star Wars experience, it can be fun, but you do have to tolerate faulty Kinect recognition the whole time. Ever since Nintendo introduced the Wii, I&rsquo;ve been hoping LucasArts would deliver a great motion-based lightsaber experience, but Kinect Star Wars left me wanting a controller again.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1826708" width="1" height="1">GIReinerhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIReiner/default.aspxAnother Rough Showing For Kinect Star Wars/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2012/03/05/kinect-star-wars-spring-showcase.aspx2012-03-05T14:00:00Z2012-03-05T14:00:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/events/microsoftspringshowcase12/starwars610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>After several delays, Microsoft&#39;s much-hyped Kinect Star Wars is finally set for release on April 3rd (alongside the Star Wars-themed Xbox 360 bundle). Previous showings of the title have been <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/06/08/a-disturbance-in-the-force-kinect-star-wars-could-use-some-work.aspx">notoriously</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/09/15/kinect-star-wars-tgs2011.aspx">disastrous</a>, with frequent complaints about sub-par motion controls and ultra-linear gameplay. What I saw at the Spring Showcase didn&#39;t convince me that this is a must-have for Star Wars fans (or Kinect owners), but it did give me a better idea of how the game is structured.</p>
<p>Jedi Destiny: Dark Side Rising is the primary single-player campaign, and features players starting as a Padawan that&#39;s sent to the Wookie planet of Kashyyyk. We were shown the lightsaber combat that&#39;s been displayed at previous shows, and it seems just as unexciting as ever. Players have access to a limited amount of gestures, including saber flailing, jumping, and leaning forward to dash. These on-foot sections appear to be the definition of linear, as the gameplay involves little else than dashing from enemy to enemy and flailing your arms. Your right hand controls your force abilities, but it doesn&#39;t look to make the combat any more engaging (although LucasArts pointed out to us that you could Force dangle an opponent above a co-op partner for an easy lightsaber kill). We were told that Jedi Destiny would cycle between on-foot action, land speeder sections, space combat, duels, and more for its 4-6 hour duration, but we didn&#39;t see anything outside of this brief section on Kashyyyk.</p>
<p>Podracing is the other substantial mode that was shown off, and features eight races across four planets. Most of the gameplay in this mode boils down to moving your arms in the correct direction of upcoming turns.We saw a race on Tattooine that was similar to the scene in The Phantom Menace, and it featured hazards like womp rats that jump onto your pod. These can be knocked off by making a throwing motion in their general direction, and they should be taken care of before they eat away at your pod&#39;s defenses. Power-ups are available from time to time, and we saw one that spawns a lightsaber training droid above your ship that shoots nearby racers.</p>
<p>Two other modes were detailed, and they both resemble minigames more than substantial experiences. Rancor Rampage allows players to run roughshod over four different areas, and I saw the Mos Eisley environment in action. Gestures include swinging your arms to swipe at buildings and grab civilians, running in place to dash through buildings, clapping hands to creative a shockwave attack, and jumping to...jump. You can go crazy until a timer runs out, and increasingly-difficult foes appear in waves as your alert level goes up. Jetpack droids may be the first line of defense for these cities, but they won&#39;t take long to call in Stormtroopers on speeder bikes.</p>
<p>Gamers haven&#39;t seen much of the announced dancing mode, but they didn&#39;t waste any time in mocking it. This silly mode looks to ape Dance Central&#39;s format, and has players dancing to Star Wars versions of contemporary hits as Slave Leia or C-3PO (<i>watch Stormtroopers dance to &quot;Y.M.C.A.&quot; with the reworked &quot;It&#39;s great to be in the Empire today&quot; lyrics at the bottom of this article</i>). LucasArts seemed to acknowledge the backlash at the event, saying &quot;we know it won&#39;t be for everyone.&quot;</p>
<p>Previous showings of this game have been met with almost unanimous negativity, and what I saw at the Spring Showcase didn&#39;t make me any more optimistic about the title. It&#39;s nice to see that goofy distractions like the dancing mode won&#39;t be included in the main story, but the campaign looks tedious enough on its own. Kids may enjoy novelties like stomping around as a Rancor, but gamers looking for an engaging Star Wars experience might want to approach this title with caution.</p>
<p><i>You can take a look at some of the modes in action in this b-roll footage below:</i></p>
<p>(Please visit the site to view this media)</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1744261" width="1" height="1">GIDanhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIDan/default.aspxKinect Star Wars Duel Trailer Probably Better Than Game/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2012/01/26/kinect-star-wars-duel-trailer-probably-better-than-game.aspx2012-01-26T17:45:00Z2012-01-26T17:45:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/microsoft/kinect/starwars/duel610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>The new trailer for Kinect Star Wars game stars that annoying kid you met in college who wanted to be exactly like Jack Black but was only mildly amusing. </p>
<p>Kinect Star Wars is set to release in early 2012, but here is a taste of what the game will be like&hellip;actually this trailer doesn&rsquo;t feature any gameplay, but from what we&rsquo;ve seen of the game, maybe that was a wise choice.</p>
<p>(Please visit the site to view this media)</p>
<p>Check out our TGS coverage of the game, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/09/15/kinect-star-wars-tgs2011.aspx">here</a>.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1655751" width="1" height="1">GIBenhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIBen/default.aspxKinect Star Wars As Rough As Ever At TGS/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/09/15/kinect-star-wars-tgs2011.aspx2011-09-16T03:13:00Z2011-09-16T03:13:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/kinectstarwars610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>If you&#39;ve followed our coverage of Kinect Star Wars, you know we&#39;ve expressed plenty reason for concern. Phil came away unimpressed when he played it <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/06/08/a-disturbance-in-the-force-kinect-star-wars-could-use-some-work.aspx">at E3</a>, Jeff Cork experienced recognition problems during the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/08/16/arm-swinging-report-rancor-playable-in-kinect-star-wars.aspx">Gamescom demo</a>, and the game has been <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/08/24/the-force-is-weak-with-this-one-kinect-star-wars-delayed.aspx">delayed</a> because of quality concerns. Despite the issues and criticism this title has faced, Microsoft is showing it off once again at their TGS booth. After checking it out, you can put me in the same camp as Phil and Jeff when it comes to my thoughts on the game.</p>
<p>The demo starts with your Jedi descending via ship to a landing platform. It started as a one-player full-screen view, but it easily switched to split-screen multiplayer when the Microsoft booth attendant stepped in and waved at Kinect. Movement is extremely limited, with the primary action being a dash performed by leaning forward. All running is done automatically, so it&#39;s basically a matter of leaning forward until you get to an enemy, waving your arm around for a bit to slice them up, and then leaning forward again to get to the next one.</p>
<p>Some enemies require you to jump to get around to their back, and some scripted sequences featured the ability to sidestep lasers. On a couple of occasions, I was able to move my arms to force push an object out of the way. While in battle, I found it frequently difficult to close the gap between me and the enemy, which resulted in a lot of leaning forward and jumping in an effort to get in closer proximity.</p>
<p>Lightsaber duels are lackluster, with little in the way of strategy or defense thanks to the often laggy Kinect controls. &quot;Flailing&quot; is a term that&#39;s used a lot when people describe motion controls, but that&#39;s exactly what you&#39;ll be doing as you face off against battle droids.</p>
<p>I walked away from Kinect Star Wars thinking it felt like an unimpressive amusement park ride, shuttling you along on rails from battle to battle. With limited options in terms of navigation and combat, it feels less like you&#39;re playing a game and more like you&#39;re performing a checklist of motions in a specific order. Based on what I saw, Kinect Star Wars is definitely in need of its delay to 2012.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1238400" width="1" height="1">GIDanhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIDan/default.aspxArm Swinging Report: Rancor Playable In Kinect Star Wars/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/08/16/arm-swinging-report-rancor-playable-in-kinect-star-wars.aspx2011-08-16T16:01:00Z2011-08-16T16:01:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/kinectstarwarsbox1.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Years from now, when your children talk about world events that happened in 2011, they&#39;ll likely bring up today&#39;s shocking announcement of a rancor being playable in Kinect Star Wars.</p>
<p>Game Informer&#39;s Jeff Cork had a chance to play as this lumbering beast, and, well, had this to say: &quot;You basically stomp around and Kinect occasionally does what you act out. You&#39;re on a timer and you have to create as much havok as possible before it runs out. You walk by stomping in place, and you turn your shoulders to change direction. Your arms are supposed to swing and grab stuff, but it didn&#39;t recognize my movements very well. You can do a ground pound to take out buildings. You can also pick up people and either throw them or eat them. Supposedly there will be more Rancor variants from the expanded universe, including one that flies.&quot;</p>
<p>The rancor level he saw was set on the iconic Tatooine. The rancor is periodically tasked to complete objectives along the lines of &quot;destroy three buildings&quot; and &quot;eat three civilians.&quot; Here&#39;s hoping the last objective in the game is &quot;get crushed by steel gate.&quot;</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1148488" width="1" height="1">GIReinerhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIReiner/default.aspxA Disturbance In The Force: Kinect Star Wars Could Use Some Work/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/06/08/a-disturbance-in-the-force-kinect-star-wars-could-use-some-work.aspx2011-06-08T21:36:00Z2011-06-08T21:36:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/Storm%202-w1000.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Kinect Star Wars didn&rsquo;t exactly blow the audience away during its showing at the Microsoft E3 2011 press conference earlier this week, so I was already a bit wary walking into my hands-on demo. Unfortunately, a lot of my fears seem well-founded.</p>
<p>I only got to check out a single mode of the game, but it&rsquo;s arguably the mode that will make or break the final product: playing as a Jedi. After some brief training with Yoda, I jumped into a mission against a bunch of battle droids on Cloud City. </p>
<p>Despite the Empire Strikes Back setting, this portion of the game is actually set during Episode 2. Kinect Star Wars as a whole will play out during the time period of the prequels. During the demo my unnamed Jedi character was joined by the tentacle-haired Kit Fisto, a fellow Jedi who can be controlled by a friend for a co-op experience. </p>
<p>The Jedi segments in Kinect Star Wars are on-rails in the sense that your Jedi automatically targets the next enemy. Once he&rsquo;s aimed in the right direction, I was able to choose how I wanted to take each enemy out. From range, I could lift enemies and flick them away with my left hand or force push by pushing my hand forward quickly. I could close the distance by stepping forward and leaning down to dash, at which point I could dispatch enemies with the lightsaber or a powerful kick. </p>
<p>Outside of combat, Kinect Star Wars features a few simple movement options. Stepping to the left or right caused my on-screen avatar to do a dodge jump in that direction, while simply jumping let him jump over enemies or jump down to new locations in the level. The vast majority of the movement was handled automatically though. </p>
<p>In addition to regular, easy-to-kill battle droids, I fought an armored drone and a more powerful droid that was resistant to force powers. Sadly, there wasn&rsquo;t a whole lot of strategy to this beyond dashing forward and slashing wildly until my robotic opponents fell to pieces. </p>
<p>More frustratingly, I found that several elements of the game didn&rsquo;t always work as responsively as I wished. A right-hand swipe motion that was supposed to unleash the lightsaber took a good five or six tries before it worked, and the game seemed to have trouble distinguishing whether I wanted to perform a force push or just lift enemies up. Also at one point in the halls of Cloud City, I dashed forward and got stuck against a wall. In order to progress, I had to make my character awkwardly perform his side jump a couple of times to get away from the wall. </p>
<p>Kinect Star Wars still has time before its winter release to get cleaned up. Maybe some of the game&rsquo;s other modes, such as pod-racing and X-Wing fighting will prove more entertaining than this on-foot combat scenario was. But if LucasArts really wants to win over Star Wars fans, they need to tighten up the lightsaber gameplay as much as possible. Kinect Star Wars isn&rsquo;t a lost cause by any means, but consider me worried.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=982577" width="1" height="1">GIPhilhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIPhil/default.aspxDebut Trailer For Kinect Star Wars/games/kinect_star_wars/b/xbox360/archive/2011/06/05/debut-trailer-for-kinect-star-wars.aspx2011-06-06T04:06:00Z2011-06-06T04:06:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/lucasarts/kinectstarwars/kinectstarwars610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>For many, a Kinect Star Wars game is all they&#39;ve wanted from the
peripheral. LucasArts and developer Terminal Reality will show the game
at E3, and here&#39;s your first glimpse.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/06/05/star-wars-at-e3-your-first-look-at-kinect-star-wars-exclusive/">Entertainment Weekly</a> has the exclusive video of the game&#39;s E3 trailer, and it shows off a range of Kinect-enabled Star Wars action set in Episodes I-III, including Force attacks, lightsaber action (naturally), podracing, fighter combat, and even Rancor stomping (whatever that is). EW&#39;s report even says that some form of voice-commands is enabled. Although the game&#39;s main Jedi Destiny mode encompasses Episodes I-III, players will get to visit locations from the original trilogy such as Bespin.</p>
<p>Kinect Star Wars also includes co-op play, but we likely won&#39;t have details on that until the start of E3.</p>
<p>(Please visit the site to view this media)</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=972414" width="1" height="1">GIKatohttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIKato/default.aspx